Movie review: ‘Nico, 1988’ follows final year of a troubled singer

Al Alexander More Content Now

Wednesday

Aug 8, 2018 at 11:51 AMAug 8, 2018 at 11:52 AM

It’s not easy negotiating life when the public prefers your stage persona over your true self. But it was particularly frustrating for Christa Päffgen. Right up until her untimely death 30 years ago last month, people insisted on calling her Nico, the alluring, Dietrich-like chanteuse who briefly fronted The Velvet Underground. She hated the moniker almost as much as she detested being referred to as Lou Reed’s “femme fatale.” (Great song, by the way.)

It’s a defiant stance made clear at the onset of “Nico, 1988,” an offbeat, behind-the-music biopic chronicling the final two years of Päffgen’s troubled relationships with fame, drugs and a young son who found more comfort in heroin than his long-absent mother. “Call me Christa,” she insists when her new manager addresses her as Nico. It’s 1986, and the 47-year-old is already in a snit after appearing on a Manchester radio show in which the host insisted on discussing her brief stint with the Velvet Underground instead of her long, steady career as a solo artist.

You don’t know whether to rail against her diva-like behavior or feel sorry for her plight. It’s a dichotomy that serves as a through line that Danish actress Trine Dyrholm navigates with surety in capturing the native Berliner’s unpredictable volatility. She may have survived World War II as a child, but that’s nothing compared to Christa’s battles against the demons perpetually gnawing away at her soul. She’s a mess inside and out, with her trademark blonde hair now dyed coal black and her once svelte body (she was both a model and actress) now paunchy and bruised from her twin indulgences of food and drugs.

Yet, as always, she’s a certified man magnet. Seemingly every male is infatuated with her, including her new manager, Richard (John Gordon Sinclair, years removed from the charming nerd from “Gregory’s Girl”), whose lame attempts to catch her notice are as pitiful as they are funny. In fact, for such a dour take on a dour woman, “Nico” contains a bounty of unexpected laughs, like telling the aforementioned disc jockey that she chose to live in Manchester because it reminded her of the bombed-out Berlin of her youth. You can practically hear the chamber of commerce cringing.

It’s the ennui that wins out, as Italian writer-director Susanna Nicchiarelli follows Christa’s steady downward spiral during an almost zany tour behind the soon-to-fall Iron Curtain, circumventing laws and the Gestapo-like police enforcing them. Despite the riskiness of their adventure, the drugs are rampant, and the members of her ragtag band, including Romanian violinist Sylvia (“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” star Anamaria Marinca), are often tripping mid performance or hooking up after. The life is every bit as chaotic as the life of their boss, Christa, who unwisely brings her recovering drug-addict son, Ari (Sandro Funtek), into this traveling band of decadents.

Her sudden need to be with Ari, the offspring she long ago relinquished to the parents of the boy’s father, French actor Alain Delon, suggests she sensed her end was near. But Nicchiarelli doesn’t do nearly enough with the estranged relationship. In fact, she doesn’t do much of anything, daringly avoiding any sort of plot or character development. Rather, her film plays very much like a documentary, compiling scenes that provide telling pieces of a puzzle that doesn’t become clear until coalescing in a powerful finale culminating with Christa telling Ari “goodbye” before heading out on her bicycle ride into the great beyond.

Nicchiarelli’s laissez faire style may alienate some, but I found her light-and-loose approach in keeping with a subject known for her frustrating unpredictability, both on and off stage. The Christa you got seemingly changed by the minute, and Nicchiarelli captures that serendipitous mood spectacularly. Then there’s that glorious music, all sung in character by Dyrholm. She may not be quite as intoxicating as the real Nico, but she’s not far off, with the highlights being her moving renditions of the Velvet Underground classic, “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” and “These Days,” the mournful ballad written for Nico by former lover and band member, Jackson Browne.

Those songs haunt you, both in the way they are sung and how they reflect the sorrow and regret of a fading star who laments, “I have been on the top, I have been on the bottom, and both places are empty.” It’s a perfect epitaph for a performer who never allowed herself the level of joy she brought to her fans. She’s gone now, but the unmistakable sound of that sultry voice wrapped around a mysterious aura will always be with us. And that’s truly a gift.